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Comments 48901 to 48950:

48901. meher engineer at 01:50 AM on 9 February 2013
       The Great Disconnect: the human disease of which climate change is but one symptom
       

       Mason made a good point when he wrote, "You cannot see hydrogen sulphide gas, but at concentrations of a few hundred ppm (at which level you cannot smell it either) it can be deadly poisonous." Ozone, a Green House gas, makes for an even sharper point. G.M.B. Dobson, the "Dobson Unit" man wrote, “Fabry and Buisson, [4], in 1912, made careful measurements of the absorption coefficients of ozone and compared these with the absorption of sunlight by the atmosphere. From their measurements they concluded that there was about 0.5 centimeters of ozone in one vertical thickness of the atmosphere” (google the Wikipedia article on Dobson at  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._M._B._Dobson, go to Ref 3, and click to get to his article on "40 years’ research on atmospheric ozone at Oxford: a history”; the quote above is in the Introduction). Ozone, in the stratosphere, protects all living things by absorbing the Sun's lethal ultraviolet radiation. Present in concentrations as small as a few parts per million in the air we breathe at ground level, it destroys our lungs. Incomplete combustion of fossil fuels like gasoline and diesel produces Ozone.  

48902. stonepig at 01:30 AM on 9 February 2013
       The Great Disconnect: the human disease of which climate change is but one symptom
       

       Interesting. Came back to see what else was commented.

       but Dr Yew???..."patently not about science. But it does have a rather sly political message of the sort that denialists will seize on to discredit SS: "there you go, we told you they were just pushing a leftie/hippy/tree-hugger agenda"

       I'm sorry, but I saw nothing unscience, sly, or something to seize on to boggle us stoned pigs.  I thought John's article was a delicious blend of where we are and what could happen, without stuff that boggles a statistical mind. Unless, of course, Yew consider the psychology of humanity a flabby soft science, ya, that'll connect Yew to a few good people...

       Thank you to the gardeners, and those antidotes about apples and such.  I wish those antidotes weren't true, but alas, the ignorance is the most boggling thing of all. Living in the country, snow drifted up to my windows, I am grateful for the water if it melts down into my well. Those are my dots.

       The connectedness is there, it's real, and despite those who don't see it, feel it, honor it, or protect it, it is still there, and will starve them during a great drought, or drown them on the seashore.

       If anything John, we need more of this expression about the reality of thought and action. Thank you.

        

48903. DSL at 01:14 AM on 9 February 2013
       The Great Disconnect: the human disease of which climate change is but one symptom
       

       I agree with skymccain, and I'll add that dialogue, as painful and slow as it is, is essential to the successful operation of a democracy over the long haul.

48904. Kevin8233 at 00:26 AM on 9 February 2013
       An Updated Look at What Keystone XL and Alberta Tar Sands Mean for the Climate
       

       Bubble burster here, your logic is slightly off.  Instead of calculating the total quantity of CO2 equivalents generated by this, only the difference between this and "normal" oil should be used, as this oil would replace other oil used, not be in addition to.

        

       Since the difference is 580 - 487 = 100 (round off for ease), the final number is about 17% of your original number - still high, but significantly less.

48905. chriskoz at 21:08 PM on 8 February 2013
       For Psychology Research, Climate Denial is the Gift that Keeps on Giving
       

       Bert from Eltham@26,

       One thing where you might still be wrong is that according to you "Climate Science is inherently very complicated". I totally disagree.

       When I, still some 2yago, was thinking that the "debate was not settled" according to popular media, I appreciated the "skeptic arguments" as something complex, requiring high degree of expertise to grasp.

       Now, when I started looking at the discussions on this site, I figured out the occasional deniers' comments are so hard to understand, because they are simply illogical, often succumbing to various fallacies. On the other hand, the climate science concepts discussed here, filled in beautifully my knowledge of physics, chemistry, statistics. Because the information is logical, in accordance with everything I learned from primary school to uni, it is actually easy to assimilate. Much more easier than "skeptic arguments".

48906. chriskoz at 20:35 PM on 8 February 2013
       Icy contenders weigh in
       

       mdenison,

       
       I don't know the source of this 69ft of SLR claim in 189sec of the video. The Foster & Rogling graph is not readable to me. It looks like they did linear extrapolation of SL vs CO2 trend from last glacial maximum, which is meaningless IMO.

       Alley et al 2005 in their Fig1 provide a little different picture. And different numbers are exptrapolated when Richard Alley does "the absolute stupidest thing" with this figure from about 0:45 to 1:30 of this video, it looks roughly 10-12m of SLR covering 10% of the current population.

       So those "absolute stupidest thing"numbers are uncertain, especially given the uncertainty of the CO2 levels for which we have to go back some 30Ma.

       I don't understand how Jason got it fixed at 21m. But the bottom line is, as you can carefullt read in Alley et al 2005, this process will take some 2 milenia. Meanwhile a lot of things can happen and CO2 may go back down. And even if not, the 10% population/infrastructure is not the "end of the world" disaster. It is possible for homo sapiens to adapt to that.

48907. skymccain at 19:22 PM on 8 February 2013
       The Great Disconnect: the human disease of which climate change is but one symptom
       

       Skeptical Science is not in danger of losing its focus.  However, as a few comments have suggested, in a way, we err when we separate what we can do from what we should do. There is no perfect agreement on a scientific perspective of anything – that’s what makes Skeptical Science so valuable – so why must we demand perfect agreement and separation on the subject of ethics; what we should do? 

        

       I fully support the publication of this article and appreciate both the supportive and non-supportive comments.  After all, nobody is forced to read what they are not  interested in are they?

        

       Is Dr. James Hansen to be criticised because he speaks about his concern for his grandchildren?

        

       I could go on and on but want to keep this short.

48908. Jesús Rosino at 18:54 PM on 8 February 2013
       A Climate Sensitivity Tail
       

       JasonB,

       Thanks for your insighful explanations, I especially liked the one about signal/noise in the LGM. I have to reflect on them for a while, but your arguments seem convincing to me. It would have been nice anyway if Annan had been around here to add something :).

       Of course, I agree that this discussion is interesting for the sake of accuracy, but doesn't have political implications. The main uncertainty in long-term proyections is rather the emission scenario we follow.

48909. MartinG at 18:53 PM on 8 February 2013
       An Updated Look at What Keystone XL and Alberta Tar Sands Mean for the Climate
       

       The only reason for building the pipeline is that somebody wants to make a profit. Tar sands wreak a lot of environmental damage, and are a very inefficient source of energy. We need energy even though we don’t like what it does to the environment, but tapping shale gas is infinitely preferable to exploiting tar sands.

        So why not load these plans with the real costs of the project and hence make the project so expensive so it is uneconomical. Without profit greed will go look somewhere else. With less oil available the price will go up. Our real problem is to use our energy more efficiently – and the only realistic way to do that is to make it more expensive. Same goes for the SUVs - put a heavy tax on fuel to reflect the real cost of its use – let the price rise – and then, and only then will mr Joe Public take fuel economy seriously. Europe has done it – next step US and Canada.

48910. Trevor_S at 18:15 PM on 8 February 2013
       The Great Disconnect: the human disease of which climate change is but one symptom
       

       Dr Yew, you have a point but if you have the majority on the same page in relation to climate science, what then ? and while Andy seems to think we can all live in cities and install a few solar panels and spinning windmill blades, I don't think that will work, assumig you are trying to keep < 4 degrees cooler world.  If less than 4degress is not the end game, what is it ?

       It would be nice to see some firm numbers on the the destruction just doing that would cause, having everyone buy a new electric car, even if powered with renewables, billions of them ?  

       This seems one small step in perhaps providing a debate to what will the future have to be like ?  My partner and I are doing the modern version of Thoreau's iconic Walden, albeit with a Dam instead of a pond :)  as an expermineton in living a more simple existence for that very reason, we think there are no other options for the future but would love to see some informed debate with numbers.

       There was a similar piece here

       https://theconversation.edu.au/living-off-the-grid-is-possible-but-its-not-enough-to-fix-climate-change-10929

48911. jyushchyshyn at 17:51 PM on 8 February 2013
       An Updated Look at What Keystone XL and Alberta Tar Sands Mean for the Climate
       

       Again, you are blaming Alberta. No need to give up your gas guzzling SUV as long as you fly the gas in from a country from which flaring accounts for 99% of the well to wheel emissions. People do need to remember that industry only makes products which consumers buy. It is also true that in the case of fuel for cars, trucks and SUV’s, most of the emissions from “well to wheel” come from the tailpipe. Even if oil from the tar sands could be replaced with a more ideal source of oil, which could be difficult because OPEC countries have a horrible environmental record, the best emission reductions which could be accomplished without a reduction of consumption of hydrocarbon fuels would be rather weak intensity targets. Intensity targets are the controversial class of greenhouse gas reduction targets which could result in increased total greenhouse gas emissions if the growth of consumption increases at a sufficient rate.

       In order to make real reductions in environmental impact, consumers must take responsibility for their choices. These choices must be informed choices. Even organic produce and products which are recommended by such environmental groups as Greenpeace may not be the most sound products. Use of energy must be minimized by using such products as compact fluorescent lights and well insulated homes.

       Whether the Keystone Pipeline is approved or not will not change whether or not Earth warms. If people stopped using gas to power their cars, there would be no market for the oil and the pipeline would shut down and the investors would lose their money. But if we continue to use the oil without the pipeline, we will just buy the oil from other sources. Or perhaps there will be a gas shortage, which will result in a huge backlash. Denialists already want to jail climatologists, and they have yet to make any kind of sacrifice. If the fight agianst global warming leads to a shortage, it will be unsafe to go on a walk unless you wear a T-shirt that says, "Global warming is a hoax."

48912. JasonB at 15:20 PM on 8 February 2013
       Temp record is unreliable
       

       Tom Curtis,

       I think you'll find that a lot of "skepticism" can be boiled down to failing to put things into perspective. :-)

48913. BillEverett at 15:19 PM on 8 February 2013
       The Great Disconnect: the human disease of which climate change is but one symptom
       

       From an email this morning from a friend in New Mexico:

       "Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.

        

       "There is no other way for land to survive the impact of mechanical man, nor for us to reap from it the esthetic harvest it is capable, under science, of contributing to culture.

        

        

       "That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics. That land yields a cultural harvest is a fact long known but latterly forgotten.

        

        

       "Such a view of land and people is of course subject to the blurs and distortions of personal experience and personal bias. But wherever the truth may lie, this much is crystal-clear: our bigger-and-better society is now like a hypochondriac, so obsessed with its own economic health as to have lost the capacity to remain healthy. The whole world is so greedy for more bathtubs that it has lost the stability necessary to build them or even to turn off the tap. Nothing could be more salutary at this stage than a little healthy contempt for a plethora of material blessings.

        

        "Perhaps such a shift of values can be achieved by reappraising things unnatural, tame, and confined, in terms of things natural, wild, and free."

        

        

       Aldo Leopold
       (1948)
48914. JasonB at 15:11 PM on 8 February 2013
       A Climate Sensitivity Tail
       

       Jesús Rosino #17,

       There are some discrpenacy among probability distribution functions on Figure 2 based on the instrumental record, but all of them tend to point to the lower end of the sensitivity spectrum.

       They all have peaks at the lower end of the PDF, but the problem is that they all have long, fat tails — in other words, they are a very poor constraint on climate sensitivity, as I mentioned. The Last Glacial Maximum, on the other hand, is a much better constraint.

       The fact that the estimates based on the instrumental period tend to peak low has probably more to do with the fact that the climate has not been in equilibrium during that entire instrumental period and so therefore converting the sensitivity computed into an equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS), which is what is being discussed, requires some guesswork (and, dare I say it — modelling).

       I'm prone to trust sensitivity based on instrumental record rather than paleo, as there are significantly less uncertainties regarding both temp and forcing changes.

       It's important to consider both signal and noise.

       There is no doubt that the temperature accuracy and many of the forcing accuracies during the instrumental period are much better than temperature and forcing reconstructions of the Last Glacial Maximum. In other words, the noise is lower.

       However, the change in temperature and forcing between the LGM and now is so much greater than the change during the instrumental period — in other words, the signal — that the signal:noise ratio is in fact much better using paleo reconstructions than it is using the instrumental period. That's why the range of estimates for climate sensitivity derived from the LGM are so much tighter than the range of estimates from the instrumental period, the last millennium, and volcanic eruptions, easily shown in that figure. The final result, combining the different lines of evidence, owes much more to the LGM results than it does to the instrumental period.

       Also don't forget that during the instrumental period,

       1. We still don't have a very good constraint on the influence of aerosols, and
       2. The climate has not been in equilibrium, as I already stated.

       For these reasons I trust the sensitivity based on the paleo data far more than I trust the sensitivity based on the instrumental period, and that trust is vindicated by the level of uncertainty associated with the sensitivity derived from each.

       It's true that there's no change in the warming trend, but, as Annan says in the comments, high-end sensitivities should show a gradual acceleration.

       I don't think that's true — not yet, anyway. There are a wide range of sensitivities in the models used in the IPCC reports yet the individual model forecasts haven't separated themselves into different temperature ranges based on their sensitivities yet, they're still all mixed together. So why should we expect the acceleration in the trend to have separated itself from the noise by this date?

       He adds that "quite a sustained steadying, with the limited ocean warming and changes to forcing estimates all points in the same direction".

       I don't say that Annan is right, my point is that I don't think he's saying just the same as mainstream climate blogs, and that he is indeed suggesting a (slight) change in the way climate sensitivity is portrayed in scientific reviews.

       I guess my point is that to the extent that he's saying something different to the mainstream climate blogs, he's wrong.

       I'm not talking about his claims that the IPCC and others have failed to damp down that long, fat tail as much as they should have — as far as I knew, that was "settled" years ago by his work, among others, and Figure 2 shows very clearly that combining the different lines of evidence very effectively shows very high sensitivities to be unlikely, despite the instrumental period on its own not being able to show that, so I wasn't aware that this was the problem that he claims it is — but rather his claims that the last ten years or so tell us anything useful. Think about it — if the various estimates of climate sensitivity based on the instrumental period still had such fat tails just five years ago, then why would an extra five years suddenly turn that around and allow calculations of sensitivity based on the instrumental period to now rule out high sensitivities?

       It's true that his statement is prone to controversy, but the denialist point that he is suggesting a sensitivity lower than 2 is easily debunked, and I think that this controversy may have the positive effect of attracting more climate scientists to the discussion put forward by Annan. :) Constraining sensitivity is an interesting issue.

       It's trivially easy to debunk, but that doesn't mean that the usual suspects will actually do so and won't instead blindly repeat it as if it supports them. Yet another example of how "fake" their scepticism really is.

       Constraining sensitivity is an interesting issue, but I suspect you'll find that there's little more progress that can be made on that front until the signal during the instrumental period is so great that the signal:noise ratio becomes higher than with the LGM.

       In other words, the only way to really get a much more precise value on it is by waiting until Bad Things Happen.

       In the meantime, even the lower limits of the likely range suggest urgent action. "Lukewarmists" like to pretend that we only need to worry if the sensitivity is really high, and that if it's somewhere in the middle of the range or lower (Steven Mosher defines "lukewarmists" as those who think there is a >50% probability of it being less than 3°, apparently not realising that that includes pretty much everyone) then we can sit back and relax.

48915. villabolo at 15:04 PM on 8 February 2013
       The Great Disconnect: the human disease of which climate change is but one symptom
       

       An apology to future generations.

       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD5xFKulrNk 

48916. Glenn Tamblyn at 13:31 PM on 8 February 2013
       The Great Disconnect: the human disease of which climate change is but one symptom
       

       DrYew

       
       The hard science of Climate is a necessary precondition for dealing with AGW, but it is not a sufficient condition.  Because the problem is fundamentally psychological in nature. You correctly point out the type of reaction denialists (n fact many conservative types) have to supposedly 'touchy feely stuff' ,  their particularly psychological reaction.

       But John's piece, although expressed as a personal narrative, is dealing with a different psychological effect. Disconnect is something I suspect most Westerners are afflicted by.

       So there is a conundrum. Do we not discuss something like this because it will  trigger a negative reaction in some people, even if the topic is meant to address  a psychological issue in another group of people for whom thinking about this might be highly beneficial?

48917. Glenn Tamblyn at 13:05 PM on 8 February 2013
       A Climate Sensitivity Tail
       HadfieldThe problem with trying to draw any inference about CS from decade scale surface temperature changes is that what we are often seeing is short term variability. Or mwe might be seeing fluctuations due to changing patterns of where the heat is going in the oceans with a flow-on impact on surface temperatures. Any measure of longer term CS must include the longer term processes. However we can't assume that because a long term process may have a certain long term impact that we can then assume that some linear proportion of that impact will appear quickly.Long termimpacts may well occur in very non-linear ways over longer time scales. For this reason I tend to prioritize types of studies in terms of how much weight I give them:1. Long term Paleo studies.2. Models3. Short term CS estimates.
48918. John Mason at 13:00 PM on 8 February 2013
       The Great Disconnect: the human disease of which climate change is but one symptom
       

       Dr Yew,

       Why do you suggest that recognising that the environment is of vital importance to Mankind's continued existence is the sole territory of left wingers or hippies? Conservatives need to eat, drink and breathe too!

       In fact, the reality is that it was the organised climate science denial movement who first projected the climate change issue as a right versus left debate. By doing so, they created the polarisation that still infests the online blog-wars. Events will catch up with this tactic at some point: like gravity, the laws of atmospheric physics don't care a hoot which guy you voted for! 

       In the meantime, there's room, I think, for a bit of philosophy here and there, because half the problem does stem from the way many view the world and the wanton consumerist lifestyles that many westerners (both left wing and right wing) have become accustomed to.

48919. John Mason at 12:47 PM on 8 February 2013
       The Great Disconnect: the human disease of which climate change is but one symptom
       

       tlitb1,

       "Could you provide any evidence for this alleged desire by this "corporate world" to promote a 'disconnect' amongst the populace?"

       I didn't  say it was deliberate, did I? It is, as you said, an effect. Take advertising, for example: it creates via clever messaging an effective illusory projection in order to sell stuff to people that they do not necessarily need. The deliberate bit is creating the advertising message. The effect is to further disconnect people from actuality. This is promoted not to disconnect people but to make money, which is the raison d'etre for corporations. They may not desire to further disconnect people, but neither do they seem to have much concern that they are in the business of doing so: in the race to rake in more numbers than the competition that conscience-related bit has fallen by the wayside, a bit like the environment!

48920. Tom Curtis at 11:45 AM on 8 February 2013
       Temp record is unreliable
       

       IanC, thankyou for your detailed analysis.  I note that your plotted difference is a close match to that provided by Kevin, but what a difference in perspective does the inclusion of the original data make.  In this case it is worth noting that the GISStemp trend is 0.64 C per century.  The overall change in trend is, therefore, less than 10% of the total.

48921. Andy Skuce at 11:41 AM on 8 February 2013
       The Great Disconnect: the human disease of which climate change is but one symptom
       DrYew@9

       Our main focus here remains on the science and on countering misinformation. But the challenge that we face in addressing climate change is not just a technical one, values matter. Even science journals like Nature have political editorials, for example, the recent one on the Keystone XL pipeline, not that I agree with it.

       All of the contributors to Skeptical Science do it for free. We are driven by varied motives and have many diverse viewpoints, but I think it is fair to say that all of us want to see the slide into a climate crisis halted. That has led me into a lot of reading outside of hard science—on politics, economics, philosophy, psychology and even sociology—in an effort to try and understand why policy changes are so slow in coming. If only it were as easy as pointing out that some people on the Internet are wrong about the science.

       I believe that John Mason is quite right in pointing out how many of us have become detached from the natural world. I don't share all of his views (nor he mine) and I don't think that the kind of lifestyle he lives is a realistic one for most of us; the great majority of people are going to have to continue to live in big cities. I am currently working on a couple of articles that look at the disconnect that many of us have in connecting our knowledge of climate science to climate action. See, for example, this non-science opinion piece in the Royal Meteorological Society journal Weather.

       I disagree with you when you say that we need a mono-focus on the science. As somebody (Swift?) said: You can't reason somebody out of a position that they didn't reason themselves into. Similarly, we can't rely on just hard-sciencing our way out of a problem that we didn't hard-science our way into.

48922. Gestur at 11:00 AM on 8 February 2013
       The Great Disconnect: the human disease of which climate change is but one symptom
       

       John, I’m very grateful indeed to you for this fine essay. I personally share with you a dismay at how fast so many of us have lost these connections, as I also know the satisfactions of reconnecting to nature in this simple way of growing some of your own food. These are important thoughts you’ve set down—of the utmost importance—that positively need to be brought up and thought about deeply by all of us these days.

48923. calyptorhynchus at 10:47 AM on 8 February 2013
       The Great Disconnect: the human disease of which climate change is but one symptom
       

       Dr Yew

       I assume your response is a joke.

       It's not a very good one.

48924. Terranova at 10:44 AM on 8 February 2013
       The Great Disconnect: the human disease of which climate change is but one symptom
       

       DrYew, I agree.

48925. dana1981 at 10:40 AM on 8 February 2013
       A Climate Sensitivity Tail
       

       Bob @31 - true, right after I submitted that post I thought to myself "surface air temperature, technically".  I generally stick to "surface temperature" just to keep it simple, and distinguish from overall global temperautre.

48926. IanC at 10:30 AM on 8 February 2013
       Temp record is unreliable
       

       I plotted the difference between the current GISTEMP, and the archived 2008 data (via WUWT); while the graph is not exactly the same as the one posted by Kevin, they are close enough that I think I have the right data set ( the difference is possibly due to me using Jan-Dec as the year rather than Dec-Nov, but I haven't bothered to check)

       

       Blue is the current GISTEMP up to 2007, with green being the difference between current GISTEMP and GISTEMP in April 2008. Point is overall adjustment is still small.

       The green curve can largely be explain through two "big" adjustments made since the RC post linked to in post 249. First is the change from GHCN v3.1.0 to GHCN v3.2.0 for the surface stations in Sep 2012 (documented here), and the switch form HADISST+Reynolds OI ocean data to ERSST (just last month. Confirmation from GISS).

       

       Green is the difference between current GISTEMP and GISTEMP in April 2008. Blue is the shift due to change in Ocean data. Red is shift due to land data change.

       Note that the overall trend changes are

       Overall change in trend:	0.057 oC/century
       GHCN v3.1 to v3.2	0.040 oC/century
       Change in ocean data	0.0089 oC/century

        

       Now Kevin,

       (1) Most of the adjustment is due to switching from GHCN from v3.1 to v3.2. This is done by NOAA and is due to better algorithm for detecting inhomogeneities in temperature record(see here). Note that this an automated program, so unless you have a valid criticism on the algorithm, you can't simply attribute this adjustment as a reseracher's bias.

       If the better algorithm says the temperature needs to be adjusted downwards and it is ignored, you can be sure folks over at WUWT will be all over it.

       (2) The change that Dr. Hansen can actually decide on, is the switch of ocean dataset. First off, prior to 2013 the ocean data actually consists of two chucks, HADISST prior to 1980, and Reynold OI dataset from 1980, so it is possible that there are inconsistencies; on the other hand ERSST is a complete dataset.

       If the decision to change dataset is to simply inflate the warming, they could've done it back in 2010. Hansen et al (2010) wrote:

       Until there is a demonstrably superior ocean data set, we will retain HadISST1 plus OISST (concatenated as in our analyses for the past several years) in our standard analysis

       Thus they have been evaluating the relative merits of the two datasets for at least two years. Furthermore, in the same paper it was revealed that if they went with a third dataset (HADSSTv2) the warming is even stronger. So the question is, if Hansen's science is based on his personal opinion rather than careful analysis, why did he wait two years? Why didn't he choose the dataset that results in the most warming?

       (3) Your claim that "ALL changes in the direction that support his belief?" is demonstrably false. In Jan 2010, an adjustment resulted in a decrease in global trend of 0.005^oC/century 

48927. Bert from Eltham at 10:11 AM on 8 February 2013
       For Psychology Research, Climate Denial is the Gift that Keeps on Giving
       

       I consider myself both educated and well informed. On more than two occasions have the moderaters here explained to me the errors in my posts in both content and logic. I listened to what they said and worked out I was indeed either partially and or totally wrong. Now I know where I was wrong I have tried to understand why I was lacking in the knowledge that led to uninformed comments. Climate Science is inherently very complicated. This has changed my mind from where I was before. Changing your mind when real new evidence is presented and then digested and understood is called science. Rejecting any real new evidence and holding steadfast to preconceived beleifs is called denialism. Bert

48928. Riduna at 09:51 AM on 8 February 2013
       A Climate Sensitivity Tail
       

       The problem for those with vested interests in fossil fuel production and use is that arguments supportive of low climate sensitivity, usually put forward by contrarian scientists, often on their behalf, are unsustainable and dangerous.  There are three reasons for this:

       1.  The most widely accepted value for climate sensitivity is 3°C, a value proposed by the IPCC.  Yet, as the author notes, there is evidence that climate scientists in general and the IPCC in particular tend to be conservative in their estimates.  One suspects that this could be true of climate sensitivity.

       2.  Increase of CO² concentration and their effects this century are an underestimation because they can not – and do not – accurately reflect the effects of feedbacks initiated by anthropogenic emissions.  It is quite possible that CO² concentration will rise more rapidly and be higher than anticipated because of carbon emissions from thawing Arctic permafrost.

       3.  Likewise, the effects on average global temperature and climate of rapidly diminishing albedo evidenced by loss of Arctic sea ice and retreating glaciers, is not accurately known.  However, it is more likely than not that it will contribute to accelerated global warming and Arctic amplification, increasing carbon emissions further and producing undesirable climate change.

48929. DrYew at 09:19 AM on 8 February 2013
       The Great Disconnect: the human disease of which climate change is but one symptom
       

       Guys -

       I'm a great supporter, reader and follower of Skeptical Science - the website that uses peer-reviewed science to counter, again and again, the misinformation of climate denialists the world around.

       So what is this piece dong here? It's patently not about science. But it does have a rather sly political message of the sort that denialists will seize on to discredit SS: "there you go, we told you they were just pushing a leftie/hippy/tree-hugger agenda".

       I'll say this just once. The biggest threat we face in the war against ignorance and denialism is slipping away from a mono-focus on hard science. As soon as there's any hint of politics, we're lost. That's why, for instance, The Guardian - for all its great work in the environmental space - carries no weight with anybody who isn't a paid-up lefite... denialists dismiss any rational arguments as a work of political cant.

       Please, John, I urge you to re-think and not to publish this type of article again.

       (Aside from that, this post is not original: the sustainability people have expressed these thoughts - in better prose - elsewhere. My favourite: http://economicsofenough.blogspot.co.uk/)

       Dr Jonathan M

48930. Bob Loblaw at 08:59 AM on 8 February 2013
       Climate science peer review is pal review
       

       MartinG:

       The phrase "pal review" was an insulting term proffered by the fake skeptics, accusing mainstream scientsists of bad behaviour. The strongest evidence of such bad behaviour is in the fake skeptics' papers and reviews. Forget the label, and focus on the behaviour.

       Even the phrase "peer review" doesn't mean exactly what it says. In the case of the fake skeptics, their "peers" are other fake skeptics, and "peer review" doesn't help much - they are more pals than reviewers. "Peer review" is supposed to mean "expert review". In many disciplines with small global communities, it can be hard to find an expert you don't know at least a bit. Review by pals is fine if the pals do a thorough review - it's when reviewers are more interesting in a group hug that it is a problem. And again, when you look for the evidence, bad reviewing habits show up in the fake skeptics' camp far more strongly than in the mainstream.

       I have personally reviewed papers of people that I know well - that is, as a journal reviewer, not a pre-submission review. One had worked as an undergrad with the group I was a grad student in. He later did grad work elsewhere, and I reviewed a paper from his M.Sc. work when I was a prof. I signed the review. When we talked a year or so later, he said he was initially surprised at the rough review (I saw major problems) coming from someone he knew, but then when he went over it all in detail, he realized that the review was the most constructive appraisal of his research that he had seen so far.

       I put the "pal" aside, and became a reviewer. Sometimes, the best "pal" you can have is the one that points out where you are going wrong. That is how the review process should work.

       I also remember that the department where I did my grad work saved their toughest questioning of "Friday afternoon seminar" speakers for their own grad students. These weren't "boost their ego" sessions - these were "slash and burn" sessions. The profs wanted to produce good scientists, and letting a grad student out into the big wide world with bad results was not in the interest of the department's reputation.

48931. mdenison at 08:48 AM on 8 February 2013
       Icy contenders weigh in
       

       Sorry - I forgot to point out that the abstract from Foster and Rohling draw the conclusion of a 9 m rise for current CO2 levels.  I haven't worked out yet how that squares with the graph.

48932. Bob Loblaw at 08:23 AM on 8 February 2013
       A Climate Sensitivity Tail
       

       dana @ 25:

       There is even a slightly finer distinction that is almost always skipped: when it comes to the land record, we're talking about global surface air temperature. The air temperature close to the surface is not the same as the temperature of the actual ground surface. Ocean temperatures are measured differently, so it is a real surface temperature representation. This is one of the reasons why the analysis methods continue to distinguish between ocean and land data sets.

48933. mdenison at 07:55 AM on 8 February 2013
       Icy contenders weigh in
       

       At climate desk live another Jason Box report Humans Have Already Set in Motion 69 Feet of Sea Level Rise he shows there is a relationship between sea level rise and CO2 levels see graph at 189sec . I first came across this in a different guise in David Archers book the Long Thaw and paper, Fig3.

       That relationship is also shown in much more detail for the last 500,000 years by Foster & Rohling   in the "Relationship between sea level and climate forcing by CO2 on geological timescales" , graph here.

       
       Having seen that graph 21m (69ft) looks optimistic. There appears good reason to think a lot of ice could melt. With the amount of CO2 we have put into the atmosphere the situation now is a very different regime to that in that in the Eemian. Dahl & Jensen's better news of stability may no longer apply.

48934. perwis at 07:44 AM on 8 February 2013
       A Climate Sensitivity Tail
       

       Grypo #19

       I agree that it is a strange comparison. The nuclear winter was hardly as well researched in the 1980s as the climate sensitivity issue is today.

       BTW: The late Stephen H Schneider has a really interesting story to tell about this in his book "Science as a contact sport" (National Geographic Society, 2009) He did some modelling on the climatic effects of a thermonuclear war, and found that it would probably not lead to as much cooling as Carl Sagan thought. Sagan chose to ignore Schneider’s results, instead promoting the "nuclear winter" hypothesis, causing a schism between these two great scientists and science communicators of our time. Schneider's book is recommended reading for anyone who is interested in the history of climate science. It is really well written and provides an exiting first hand account from someone who was in the centre of both the science and the debate over climate change for more than four decades.

48935. perwis at 07:18 AM on 8 February 2013
       A Climate Sensitivity Tail
       

       Yvan #22:

       Hansen et al (2011) have a nice comparison with different heat uptake sinks in addition to the ocean: atmosphere, land, ice-on land, floating ice (see Fig 8 and the discussion in section 10.1). They calculate that the ground uptake today is about 0.03 W/m^2 averaged over the Earth's surface. Look there and you'll also find references to other works, which perhaps can be of some use for you.

       Hansen, J., Sato, M., Kharecha, P., and von Schuckmann, K.: Earth's energy imbalance and implications, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 11, 13421-13449, doi:10.5194/acp-11-13421-2011, 2011 Full paper here.

        

48936. StBarnabas at 07:06 AM on 8 February 2013
       The Great Disconnect: the human disease of which climate change is but one symptom
       

       Hi John

       thanks for this. I am currently reading through "Future" by Al Gore, which looks at similar themes.

       I live also in the UK at present. You will find many similar minded people at Navitron. 

       I decided a while ago at least if I could not influence people I would change my owm lifestyle...

48937. Jonas at 07:04 AM on 8 February 2013
       The Great Disconnect: the human disease of which climate change is but one symptom
       

       Gardening (one of the main themes the Transition Movement) helps to reconnect. I am a software developer and I would like the world to keep communications technologies, medicine, and other hightech things, but I also would like to learn not to be too dependent on these things as fas as basic needs are concerned. Transition calls this "resilience" (stability to say global financial, global weather, etc. hasards)

       Gardening personally helps me to balance my office job and body movement and social activities. The garden I participate in, is a mixture of "Schrebergarten" (private garden on public ground) and community garden (on private or public ground): it's public ground and the city (Munich) provides basic services like preparation of the soil, organic fertilizers, water pump, big tools and organic seedlings, ond off you go, caring and harvesting. I am so fond of this concept, that I created a an internet forum for all the 1000 gardeners of the concept, hoping this helps to ease cooperation among people who might not meet, because some are in the garden during the morning, some during lunch break, some in the evening.

       Also, this kind of gardening helps to reduce CO2: you eat more vegetables (less animal products) simply because they abound, if you go there by bicycle, there is no CO2 for transportation; the water is pumped manually, so there is no CO2 for irrigation; since it's organic, there is no CO2 for huge effort on dangerous genetic crops and no CO2 for fertilizers and fertilizers and also no nitrous oxides from chemical fertilizers; also there is no packaging, no supermarkets, no intermediate cooling, little waste, ultimate freshness and it's movement (no need for workout on machines) and it's social (other gardeners). 

       Picture: Krautgarten (location Riem near Munich; there are several locations, LINK ):

       

       Moderator Response: [RH] Hot linked URL that was breaking page format.
48938. hadfield at 06:53 AM on 8 February 2013
       A Climate Sensitivity Tail
       

       And I should add to the last post that by global warming I mean increases in the global surface temperature, which is certainly not the only climate metric, or necessary the best one, but is the one for which we have the best data.

48939. hadfield at 06:51 AM on 8 February 2013
       A Climate Sensitivity Tail
       

       I think James' point about the last decade is not that global warming has stopped (implying low or zero climate sensitivity) but that it has not accelerated to the extent that it would have if climate sensitivity were very high (above, say, 4).

48940. tlitb1 at 06:41 AM on 8 February 2013
       The Great Disconnect: the human disease of which climate change is but one symptom
       

       "The corporate world, of course, finds it easier to function with a disconnected populace, which is why it has promoted and continues to promote such disconnection."

       That strikes me as a sweeping generalisation. Could you be more specific about the entity here described as the "corporate world"? Could you provide any evidence for this alleged desire by this "corporate world" to promote a 'disconnect' amongst the populace?  

        

       It seems easier to point to the resulting *effect* large corporations have upon the populace i.e. easing the drudgery of every day life to the point that knowledge of the realities of farming or fishing has diminished to the point of non-existence, but that effect is surely a by-product of their existence not a coherent designed goal by any single entity. 

       For example I guess one could easily argue that the abolition of human slavery is a by-product of the "corporate world", but would one credit that entity as having that as an intial motivation?

48941. vrooomie at 06:37 AM on 8 February 2013
       The Great Disconnect: the human disease of which climate change is but one symptom
       

       In keeping with the musical theme, one of mine, wrt to all that is done 'in our name.'

        

       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0dy56N5_d8

48942. Doug Bostrom at 06:30 AM on 8 February 2013
       A Climate Sensitivity Tail
       

       I should stop because this is going off-topic but if the total energy accumulation of the planetary surface (aka "global warming" which of course includes the oceans) is not continuous then... what? What would be the full implications? 

       So either conveying the impression to the listening public that energy accumulation is not a steady, continuous, uninterrupted process is astoundingly wrong or... what? 

       When an organization armed with the single loudest (even if ineffective and self-defeating) press arm performing climate communication makes this error they're wasting -everybody's- time, most especially that of relative pipsqueaks such as SkS. We can talk ourselves blue in the face here for a year but a single thoughtless press release from NOAA will nullify that work.  Everybody listens to NOAA, everybody repeats what they say. A search on press results from NOAA's most recent bullet-to-the-foot is as depressing as it is pretty damned annoying.  

48943. JanB at 06:14 AM on 8 February 2013
       The Great Disconnect: the human disease of which climate change is but one symptom
       

       A great article on an important subject. Thanks.

48944. dana1981 at 06:09 AM on 8 February 2013
       A Climate Sensitivity Tail
       

       I agree, a lot of people (including climate scientists and climate science organizations) use 'global temperature' when they should say 'global surface temperature'.  It's a very important distinction, and careless to ignore it.

48945. KR at 06:02 AM on 8 February 2013
       Climate science peer review is pal review
       

       Rob Painting - That is a good point; the "MWP" does not appear to have been a global phenomena, but rather a regional one, and more global reconstructions with additional proxies differ in some regards.

       The point I was making was with respect to the overall "hockey-stick" of recent temperatures that is seen in so many other reconstructions, using different statistical techniques and proxies. Not to mention Wahl Ammann 2007 which refuted M&M, and demonstrated that the various complaints about Mann's techniques made no significant difference to his primary conclusions. 

48946. Doug Bostrom at 05:21 AM on 8 February 2013
       A Climate Sensitivity Tail
       

       Yeah, Dana, but here's NOAA's headline statement to the public, as found by the first Google hit on "NOAA state of the climate":

       " 2012 global temperatures 10th highest on record "

       Thereby entirely ignoring the overwhelming majority of the energy added to the Earth system during 2012. 

       What does yelling out "10th warmest year" say to John Q. Citizen? Superficially (which, given our busy lives is the consideration most of us can afford) it says that global warming is an intermittent phenomenon, that in some years we find the world cooler than it was the year before. This is of course not only wrong but plays perfectly into the hands of "global warming has stopped." 

       It's not as though this communcation effort started yesterday, that we don't already know the surface temperature expresses only a tiny fraction of accumulated energy in the Earth system. In any case, including "oceans" in "surface" isn't such a huge conceptual leap; the oceans are an integral part of the functioning of the atmosphere and compared to the rest of our sphere are a surface feature. 

48947. william5331 at 05:04 AM on 8 February 2013
       A Climate Sensitivity Tail
       

       If  the long expected tipping points await us in the future then the temperature vs CO₂ graph is unlikely to be a smooth continuous function.  The most obvious tipping point is when the Arctic ocean is ice free in, say, the beginning of August.  With the huge increase in Arctic ocean sea temperature, the Arctic becomes a zone of rising air, sucking climate zones northward in the fall.  Temperature readings from met stations all over the northern hemisphere lurch upward and this appears as a discontinuous or at least a sharp increase in temperature in the global record. The ice free condition then comes earlier and earlier each subsequent year until a new regime is established.  Temperature then continues to increase gradually according to climate sensitivity and our output of Carbon dioxide (which may be considerably reduced due to the resulting collapse in our ecology and hence our economy)  Gaia wins.

48948. Rob Painting at 05:02 AM on 8 February 2013
       Climate science peer review is pal review
       

       KR - global ice volume is a pretty good proxy for global temperature. Based on the sea level trend over the last 10,000 years, itself determined by the global ice volume, it is very likely that Dr Mann's reconstructions underestimate how much warmer it is now, when compared the the Medieval Period.

48949. KR at 04:56 AM on 8 February 2013
       Climate science peer review is pal review
       

       MartinG - "When the correct answer has been established then all reputable scientists working in that field will agree because they will not find any real data or logic to disprove the point - and then they will have nothing to publish - even in 3rd rate journals."

       That statement is demonstrably false - see the Tobacco Control Archives regarding the publishing activities of the tobacco industry: including several thousand references to Dr. Fred Singer, linked, as mentioned in the opening post, to many of the authors of these climate papers. 

       Or can I interpret your statement to mean you feel that the authors of such papers are not reputable scientists? Because I would agree on that. And when such papers are published in what should be a critically peer reviewed venue, because they were not actually given critical review, those papers have a false imprimatur of respectability and minimal quality. 

       Opinions are one thing, observations and theories (not hypotheses, I'll note) tied to reality are more harshly evaluated. Opinions contradicted by the facts are simply wrong. 

       ---

       Regarding your various statements re: Dr. Mann, I would suggest you take those to this thread - which notes the many confirmations of his results. Results that are notably not refuted. 

       

48950. Dikran Marsupial at 04:50 AM on 8 February 2013
       Climate science peer review is pal review
       

       Martin G wrote "So I remain sceptical about the claims that the papers were not subject to a peer review, or that they did not deserve to be published."

       
       If you were skeptical, you would be willing to specify what sort of evidence you would require to be able to conclude that the paper did not deserve to be published.  Your most recent comments suggests that there is no evidence that would convince you, which is not skepticism.
       

       Bringing up M&M is probably a bad idea since that paper was itself badly flawed and discredited by subsequent studies.  Note also that paper was published in 2003/4, which does not neccesarily imply that the reviewers of the paper in 1997 were in a position to know about the flaws at the time.  So M&M is not proof that Mann's paper should not have been published.
       

        

       "Given that many papers are never cited (and one suspects seldom read), it probably does not matter much to anyone except the author whether a weak paper is published in an obscure journal."

        

       Not in the climate debate, where skeptic papers, whether in obscure journals or not, whether cited or not bu the research community, often get significant exposure in the media, blogsphere and politics.  For example, Soon and Bauliunas, hence the need for very thorough and effective peer review.

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